The Investment Paradox Holding OT Security Back

Industrial operators step into 2026 with clearer mandates, tighter regulations, and rising cyber risk — yet many still hesitate to invest in the very controls that would prevent the next shutdown. It’s not because they don’t understand the stakes. It’s because Operational Technology (OT) lives in a constant paradox: the systems that most urgently need protection are also the systems most difficult to interrupt, modify, or modernise.

This tension has shaped the past year. Energy utilities restored operations after ransomware disruptions, manufacturers rebuilt systems after credential breaches, and public infrastructure resumed services only after being compromised — all reflecting the same pattern: reactive spending continues to outpace preventive strategy. But OT operators are starting to question this cycle. As 2026 budget planning accelerates, the industry faces a pivotal moment: will security investment remain reactive, or finally become anticipatory?

Understanding Why OT Investment Stalls Even as Risk Rises

Even with stronger regulatory momentum — from NIS2 (Network and Information Security Directive 2) to the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), IEC 62443 updates, and evolving NERC (North American Electric Reliability Corporation) standards — many operators still struggle to act before incidents occur. This hesitation rarely comes from negligence. More often, it stems from three structural realities inside OT environments.

“If it’s running, don’t touch it.”

OT systems are designed for stability, not rapid change. Maintenance windows are scarce. Downtime is expensive. Even small configuration updates must move through safety, engineering, vendor, and compliance layers. When uptime is the metric of success, proactive security spending becomes difficult to justify — right up until an outage forces it.

Compliance consumes the oxygen

Regulations are essential, but they also redirect resources toward documentation, audits, and reporting instead of architectural hardening. Many organisations feel secure when they are merely compliant, even when compliance does not address offline authentication gaps, legacy access pathways, or real-world operator workflows.

Security teams and engineering teams speak different operational languages.

Security wants rapid controls. Engineering wants operational continuity. Budget owners want proof that changes will not introduce risk. This misalignment delays decisions, even when security and engineering share the same goal.

What 2025 Taught Us About Waiting Too Long

Last year made one thing clear: reactive spending costs more than preventive investment — financially and operationally.

• A ransomware-triggered outage at a US energy provider required multi-day recovery and manual override procedures.
• Several manufacturing environments faced production halts after stolen credentials were used to move laterally across engineering workstations.
• Municipal services restored water and transport operations only after unauthorised access had already occurred.

These were not failures of awareness. They were failures of timing. A 2025 Gartner survey reinforced this:

The average cost of an OT outage exceeds USD 220,000 per hour when critical services or production are impacted.

Every recovery is more expensive than the safeguards that could have prevented it.

What Operators Need Now

The industry is shifting toward capabilities that reduce dependency on constant connectivity and remove the most common intrusion points before they can be exploited.

Identity that is verifiable even when networks fail

Many recent OT incidents succeeded because authentication depended entirely on centralised systems. Offline scenarios — maintenance, network disruptions, segmented zones — left gaps. That’s why interest is growing in dynamic, one-way authentication models, where credentials can be generated and verified without relying on constant server communication.
This principle is also reflected in approaches such as OTAC (One-Time Authentication Code), which enable identity verification without passwords or continuous network availability. These methods don’t replace architecture — they enhance resilience where OT truly needs it: at the edge, and even in isolation.

Evidence that remains intact even under degraded conditions

Logs stored locally — and synchronised once connections return — provide operational visibility that traditional ID-password systems simply cannot. This isn’t about replacing SIEM or compliance tooling. It’s about ensuring that essential traces of operator actions still exist when networks are unstable.

Metrics that reflect reality, not paperwork

Audits measure readiness on paper. Operators now track readiness in practice. Real-world indicators such as:

• mean time to detect (MTTD),
• mean time to recover (MTTR),
• and offline authentication success rate
  

are becoming far more important than a completed checklist.

The Shift Happening Inside 2026 Budgets

Forward-looking organisations are reframing security investment from “compliance cost” to “operational insurance.” They are allocating resources not to avoid penalties but to avoid outages. This mindset does not conflict with regulations — it accelerates the intent behind them. Agencies such as the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) have already begun emphasising validation through live operational exercises, not just policy audit trails. Regulators increasingly expect operators not simply to be compliant, but to remain functional during disruption.

This is where OT and IT finally converge:

the goal is no longer documentation but reliability.

Before You Approve a Single 2026 Line Item, Ask This

Budget discussions often focus on tools, vendors, audits, and certifications. But there is one question that cuts through the noise:

“If connectivity drops or a cyberattack disrupts our network tomorrow, will critical access still work as intended?”

If the answer is anything short of confident, preparation remains incomplete — even with compliance achieved on paper. Security that prevents service disruption, rather than responds to it afterwards, is ultimately what preserves operational continuity. And in 2026, continuity will become the most practical definition of security.

The organisations that move ahead next year will be those that modernise without waiting for the next failure — those who recognise that proactive resilience is no longer a luxury, and that safeguarding availability is as important as protecting confidentiality or integrity. Investment begins not with a purchase, but with a shift in mindset — from maintaining what already works, to protecting what must keep working tomorrow.